1974 – 1981
Scirocco Mk1
CodeType 53
DesignGiugiaro / Italdesign
BuiltKarmann, Osnabrück
Production504,153
The original. A 2+2 coupe of about 800 kg with 1.1- to 1.6-litre engines, the 110 PS fuel-injected GTI from 1976 and a facelift in 1977.
Three generations, two famous names on the drawing board and a racing history most people have forgotten. This is the story of the Volkswagen Scirocco, from the first Type 53 to the one still racing hill climbs today.
By the early 1970s, Volkswagen needed a replacement for the aging Karmann Ghia coupe. Giorgetto Giugiaro of Italdesign was already shaping the front-wheel-drive car that would become the Golf, and he saw a sports coupe in the same platform. Karmann, the Osnabrück coachbuilder that had built the Karmann Ghia since 1955, needed a new car to build. Together they brought the idea to Volkswagen.
The result was the Scirocco, known inside Volkswagen as the Type 53 and named after the hot Mediterranean wind. Production started at Karmann on February 4, 1974, and the car made its public debut at the Geneva Motor Show that March, a few months ahead of the Golf. The Scirocco shared the Golf's transverse engines, front-wheel drive and suspension layout, but under a lower, sharper body that looked nothing like the Beetle-era Volkswagens before it.
It was meant for limited production. Instead, Karmann built more than half a million first-generation cars, and the Scirocco went on sale in North America in 1975.
The original. A 2+2 coupe of about 800 kg with 1.1- to 1.6-litre engines, the 110 PS fuel-injected GTI from 1976 and a facelift in 1977.
A longer, smoother body with more headroom and a spoiler on the rear glass. The 16-valve GTX became the first Scirocco to top 200 km/h. Production ended on September 7, 1992.
Revived after 16 years, previewed by the 2006 Iroc concept. Turbocharged engines, a 280 PS R version from 2014, and no successor when production ended in 2017.
Karmann starts building the Scirocco in February. The Geneva Motor Show premiere follows in March. Early cars offer 1.1-litre and 1.5-litre engines, with rectangular headlights on the base cars and twin round headlights on the sportier TS.
The Scirocco arrives in the United States and Canada. An automatic transmission joins the range, and later in the year the familiar single windshield wiper replaces the twin wipers.
A 1.6-litre engine with K-Jetronic fuel injection and 110 PS arrives in the GTI and GLI, along with lowered suspension, anti-roll bars front and rear, and ventilated front discs. It is also the year Volkswagen goes racing with the Scirocco.
Plastic-covered bumpers that wrap to the wheel arches, larger front indicators, and black B-pillars and mirror housings.
The last first-generation cars leave Karmann in February 1981, and the Mk2 takes over at the Geneva show that March.
Volkswagen's first one-make race series used 50 identical black Sciroccos with about 105 hp. Around 80,000 spectators watched the first race at Hockenheim in April 1976, and the series gave young drivers a way into the sport.
Volkswagen and the SCCA launched the Scirocco/Bilstein Cup, and a pair of Sciroccos ran the small-bore class of the Trans-Am series. Ads called it "the racing Volkswagen."
The name returned to one-make racing with the Mk3: identical Cup cars running on compressed natural gas, racing on DTM weekends as a springboard for young drivers.
799 is a 1976 Type 53, from the year Volkswagen first went racing with the Scirocco. Fifty years on, it is still doing what the original ads promised.
Plenty has changed under the skin. The original 1.1- to 1.6-litre engines have given way to a 2.0-litre ABA eight-valve with dual Weber carburetors, the suspension runs Ground Control coilovers and KONI dampers, and the car competes at around 1,600 lb. But the shape is still Giugiaro's, the layout is still the Golf-based front-wheel drive of 1974, and the car keeps getting better one improvement at a time.
Today 799 races hill climbs, time trials and track sprints across Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia, which keeps one of the original Sciroccos where it was always meant to be.
The Scirocco story is still being written on the hill. See the 2027 plan and where 799 races next.
View 2027 Schedule